Brain Protein "Rescues" Neurons From Atrophy
...en introduced a tracer that allowed them to see in great detail the structure of the tree-like neurons in the layers of visual cortex. The scientists found that each of the different neurotrophins caused certain layers of the cortex to sprout more dendrites than others. "The findings in these two papers sh...Honeybees In The Wild Nearly Gone In North America
...ever, he said, culturingbumblebees or wild bees in great numbers or importing foreignbees are not easy solutions to the honeybee shortage. "A honeybee is a generalist. It does a good job pollinatingapples or cucumbers," he said "Other types of bees arevery specific to certain crops. "Plus, if we take nativ...Ocean Sediments Contain Record of Past Vegetation Fires in Africa
... a large amount of charcoal," he says. "Given the great distance to land and the regional slope of the sea floor, the charcoal in this core must have been brought there by winds." The charcoal is a mixture of particles from both rainforest and savanna trees, as well as grasslands. Research on modern-day...PET Project Helps Reduce Pollution Threat From Heavy Metals
... and inexpensively. "Our laboratory work has shown great promise for what weintend to do in the field with this prototype PET installation.We think the system, by the nature of its design, is costeffective. It is not a new component for urban highways. It isessentially an upgrade." But it will take more th...North America Hit Hard By Asteroid Strike In Yucatan 65 Million Years Ago
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- All asteroid-based extinctions great and small are notalike. A new study says the asteroid that struck Earth 65 million years ago andwiped out the dinosaurs was particularly deadly to North America because it hitthe Yucatan peninsula from the southeast at a 20- to 30-degree angle, spre...Antarctic Science Season Gears Up With Searches for Meteorites, Neutrinos, and New Life Forms
...of sea ice around Antarctica is one of the world's great seasonal events, yet little is known about how ice dynamics affect zooplankton and other animals in the ocean's topmost waters (the upper 100 meters). Three cruises in the Weddell Sea and associated studies, under a project led by Kenneth Smith of ......fferent kinds of mental activity. fMRI generates a great deal of information quickly (half a gigabyte or more per experiment). In the past, computing couldn't keep up with the data, and it took 24 hours or more to produce a usable image. To deal with this bottleneck, the researchers turned to PSC. CMU stat...Optical Microscopy Shines Light On Biology
...acific Northwest Laboratory, Richland, Wash. "It's great getting in on the ground floor," Dunn said. "Everything you see is new."...Urbanized Watersheds More Sensitive To Climate Change
... to a Penn State researcher. "There have been a great many studies of stream flow, temperature and precipitation, but they have all been done on undeveloped watersheds that are minimally impacted by humans," says Dr. David De Walle, professor of forest hydrology. "No one, to our knowledge, has formal...Vietnamese Chemist Finds New Use For Old Cashew Shells
...he properties ofrubber. Vietnam already produces a great deal of latex, thenatural ingredient for rubber. Unfortunately, natural rubberdoesn't hold up very well in the environment. "It's easily degraded by sunlight," said Vu. "Natural rubberneeds an anti-oxidation agent to prevent it from degrading insunli...A Phoenix From A Ring Of Fire Is A Pattern For The Recovery Of Mount St. Helens
...e blast made four journeys around the globe, and a great belt of ash encircled the Earth. Two-thirds, or about 25 square miles, of Krakatau Island (now named Rakata) disappeared, and one entire side of the volcano was torn away and dumped into the sea. In 1930, 47 years after the eruption, ...Ten Years of Progress For Superfund Basic Research Program
...sor of biological sciences, says Sphingomonasshows great promise for bioremediation work. "It's an interest...ficationplants in Illinois. However, Kinkle says a great deal of work isneeded to find the best way to use these microbes in the fieldwhere they will have to...Pets Provide Physiological Benefits For Women Living Alone
...erly pet-owners with little social contact bore no great love for their animal companions. These participants had blood-pressure readings as high as the no-pet group. Allen said further research will try to determine if pets have a similar effect on elderly men, and at what age social support become...Prostate Cancer's Aggressiveness May Be Predicted Early By The Ratio Of Free To Total PSA
... means of diagnosing prostate cancer, but there is great debate about which treatment is best for a cancer diagnosed in the early stage-watchful waiting, surgery to remove a localized cancer, or radiation therapy. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Radiation and surgery may be associated, in some cases...Herpes-Based Gene Therapy Is Key To Promising Liver Tumor Vaccine
... the body's immune system, attracting to the liver great numbers of immune cells that have developed specially in response to the tell-tale proteins found on the surface of cancer cells. In theory, the sheer numbers of these cells should wipe out any stray cancer cells that escaped the surgeon's knife. A c...Virus May Be Linked To Obesity -- Early Findings Hint At Relationship
...us disease, as has been seen with theAIDS virus. A great deal of further research is necessary to determine ifthe global epidemic of obesity may be due in part to infection with Ad-36." The research was funded in part by the UW Beers-Murphy ClinicalNutrition Center....New Vaccine Blocks Viral Entry In Cattle, May Have Implications For Human Vaccines
...ife Sciences researcher believes the vaccine holds great promise for improving cattle health. BHV-1 infecti...tchworth says. "We wanted the challenge dose to be great enough to infect some animals so we could find the limits of protection. Despite that huge dose, 70 ...Restoring Farm Land To Natural Wetlands Key To Stemming Flood
...unity to changethings so the damage wouldn't be so great in the future," said Schneider,a professor of urban and regional planning and professional scientist inthe Illinois Natural History Survey's Center for Aquatic Ecology. Schneiderserves on a state-appointed advisory committee charged with recommending......d their families, adult birds are forced to forage great distances from their breeding colonies, says Dee B...rsma. "If a chick is small, its fate is death." So great has been the competition for food, that the numbers of temperate penguins have been slowly diminishi......he persistence of sexualreproduction is one of the great mysteries of evolution. This might be anexplanation for why we turned out to be sexual and why we evolved to have twoparents instead of just cloning ourselves." Genetically speaking, sexuality is more than a little messy, Zeyladmits. Why go ...